This
week we'll continue to go backwards through baseball history and
examine the single-season home run leaders of the pre-steroid era. Preceding Tony Lazzeri as the Minor League Single-Season Home Run Leader was Clarence "Big Boy" Kraft. Big Boy was the power behind the 1919-1924 Fort Worth Panthers, one of the finest minor league teams of the pre-war era. His 55 homers in 1924 was the highest recorded in the minors up to that time and only second to Babe Ruth's major league record of 59 he set in 1921. As could be expected, after that 1924 season, everyone wanted a piece of Big Boy...
Clarence Kraft,
Waco, Tex.
Would you consider playing for the Reds for 1925 season?
Wire reply.
Jack Hendricks,
Redland Field, Cincinnati, O.
Clarence Kraft folded the telegram and slid it back into its yellow envelope. After a moment he thought better of it, took it out, smoothed it flat with his big palm and left it on his kitchen table, face up. He already knew the answer to its question - he'd asked himself the same one many times over the years - but wanted to relish that moment of uncertainty a little longer before his answer was final.
It had taken Clarence Kraft over a decade to claw his way back to the big leagues. He began his career as a hulking Indiana farm boy with a blazing fastball back in 1910. Six-foot tall and close to 200 pounds, Kraft looked every inch like his nickname "Big Boy." His 13-2 ledger in the Kitty League set the scouts tongues a-waggin' and he signed with Cleveland. Spring camp with the Indians made it clear he wasn't yet ready for The Show, so he dutifully did his tour of the low minors: Flint Vehicles, Toledo Mud Hens, New Orleans Pelicans, Clarksville Swamp Angels. He transitioned from the mound to everyday player where his potent bat could be more useful, a-la Babe Ruth. After he hit .362 to lead the Southern Association in 1913, Sporting Life magazine called him the circuit's "best natural slugger since the days of Joe Jackson."
The Brooklyn Superbas drafted Kraft off the Nashville roster and then dealt him to the Boston Braves. Kraft singled in his very first at bat, then was used as a pinch hitter a few more times before he was sent back to Nashville. The thing was, Big Boy refused to go.
The Boston Braves were a pennant-bound team and Nashville was a Southern Association team - two or three rungs below the majors. Kraft felt that if he was going back to the bushes, it should be to a higher classification league. The rookie appealed to the Baseball Players' Fraternity, a proto-union formed in 1912. By new rules agreed upon by by the Baseball Players' Fraternity and the National Commission which governed organized baseball, a player released from a major league team must be offered to a Class AA (today's AAA classification) club first. Sending Kraft to Nashville was against the new rules but the Commission didn't care, disregarding the Class AA Newark Indians interest in Kraft and awarding him to Nashville instead.
In ordinary times, there wouldn't have been a damn thing Kraft could do about his predicament, but 1914 wasn't ordinary times. Because of the threat posed by the upstart Federal League in 1914, the Baseball Players' Fraternity enjoyed a good amount of pull over the National Commission. So, when the Baseball Players' Fraternity threatened to strike over Kraft, the Commission convinced Nashville to sell the rebel ballplayer's contract to Newark, which they did.
Kraft bounced around the Class AA leagues for a few years and again kicked up controversy when he and two other players refused to report after being traded to Milwaukee in 1916. The players demanded a signing bonus which they were reluctantly given. By 1918 Kraft was thirty years old, had made himself a nuisance to baseball's ruling class and was slipping down a minor league rung each season. Then Uncle Sam came calling.
Kraft had been a gearhead since he was kid back on the farm in Indiana, and the Army put him to good use in the Motor Transport Corps. After six months in France he returned home and married his girlfriend, Dorothy Goessling. With baseball booming again, Kraft signed with the Fort Worth Panthers of the Texas League. Now into his thirties, Big Boy figured he'd wring a few more bucks out of the game before his legs went, earning enough cash to buy into a business when he retired. It was a solid plan, but it didn't quite work out like he figured.
Fort Worth had a juggernaut of a ball club in 1919. The team was assembled by owners W.K. Stripling and Paul LaGrave who acted as president and general manager respectively. The two men carefully built a core team that meshed well under the watchful eye of legendary Texas League manager Jake Atz. Fort Worth management made it a point to pay their players higher wages than was the norm for a Class A club. Not only did this led to players actually turning down promotions to a higher level league to stay in town, but spending those fat paychecks with Fort Worth merchants endeared the team to its citizens, creating a rabid fan base. After the war, Stripling and LaGrave signed an agreement with Detroit who funneled their promising players south for seasoning. In 1919, eleven of the guys on the Panthers either had time in the majors or would so very soon.
Fresh from driving ammo trucks in France, Kraft only hit .275, but his 11 home runs was the Texas League's second best. Fort Worth won one half of the split season schedule but lost to Shreveport in the playoffs. Kraft figured he'd give it another season, but Kraft wasn't much help in 1920, hitting a miserable .258 with 6 lousy home runs. Now obviously at the end of his career, Kraft signed with Fort Worth for 1921, both parties not expecting much out of the old ballplayer. Both were wrong.
Somehow, someway, Big Boy had stumbled on the secret to home run hitting. In one game early in the 1921 season, Kraft went 5 for 5 with three home runs, and never let up all summer. By the time 1921 ended, Kraft had set Texas League records for most hits (212) and total bases (376) in a season. He won the batting crown with a .352 average and smashed 31 home runs, second in the league, as Fort Worth cruised to another pennant. 1922 was almost a carbon copy of 1921 except that Kraft led the league with 32 home runs and 131 RBI. Then he and the Panthers came back and did the same thing in 1923 - Fort Worth sweeping the pennant and Kraft leading the league in homers with 32.
As the team's elder statesman, Kraft helped the younger players navigate the ways and means of a bush leaguer, offering such sage advice as "you always want to get your name in the paper. If you're walking down the street and you haven't been getting enough publicity, hit someone in the face." Thankfully for Fort Worth pedestrians, Big Boy Kraft's 95 home runs in three years garnered him enough ink in the sports pages without having to slug anyone.
In 1924 it was the opposing Texas League pitchers that wanted to slug Kraft and the other Panthers. The team won 109 games to finish 30 1/2 games in front, their incredible record was fueled by Big Boy's bat. The 37 year-old vet not only set new Texas League records for RBI (196) and total bases (414), but his 55 home runs was the best in all of baseball since Babe Ruth's 59 in 1921. He also hit a nice .349 for the pennant winners.
Since this was 1924, the age of Babe Ruth, it was Kraft's 55 home runs that really got people interested, and that's what initiated the telegram that arrived from Cincinnati.
At thirty-seven, Kraft knew he'd never be more than a novelty in the majors. Sure, maybe he'd knock a few out of the park, but he'd never approach what Babe Ruth was doing. There were other offers on the table, including a rare for the time multi-year contract from Fort Worth at $5,000 a season. That was a lot of money, but like the question posed by the Reds, Big Boy Kraft already knew his answer.
Fifty-five and out.
With the forward thinking usually associated with todays' players, Kraft used his baseball savings to capitalize on his local popularity. Still every inch the gearhead he was back in Indiana, Kraft bought a Ford dealership in downtown Fort Worth. At first, his plan seemed to work - the showroom was flooded with people. Unfortunately, they were all there to shake Big Boy's hand and talk baseball. Kraft finally had to post a notice in the local paper: you buy a car first, then we talk baseball. Kraft's business sense was acknowledged when the Panthers hired him as the team's president in 1932. The Great Depression had all but wiped out the club financially and Kraft was able to stabilize the ailing franchise in a few years. Job finished, he returned to his dealership which did well until World War II ended new car production. By this time Kraft had made the transition from former jock to respected businessman. He was elected a county judge for three terms, specializing in revamping the probation department and attempting to curtail juvenile delinquency. He retired in 1948 and enjoyed a decade of tranquility with his wife Dorothy and their three children before suffering a stroke in 1957. Several months later it took pneumonia and a heart attack to finally do to Big Boy what Texas League pitchers failed do back in 1924.
Although most of Kraft's records were eventually broken, the big fella's total of 196 RBIs is still tops in the Texas League record books for highest single season totals.
Like so many of the players I write about, I found Jack Kloza while searching for something else. And, like so many of the outsiders I write about, what at first just seemed like a marginal career highlighted by a brief cup of coffee in the majors, turned out to be a very interesting tale on so many levels. I was drawn to this fella because the grainy 1936 newspaper article I found showed a guy who looked remarkably like a young Charles Bronson. A glance at the name "Kloza" and I could tell it was some kind of "Americanized" Polish name. A little more digging and I found out that Jack Kloza was indeed not only of Polish ethnicity, but was one of only four major leaguers to have been born in Poland. That alone was enough to add his name and clipping to my "to do" files. And then, as the years passed by, the "Kloza File" grew and grew, each new piece of his career making an already interesting character more appealing. Finally, with the Kloza File just under an inch thick, I spread it all out in my studio and began typing...
Note: Although every record book and internet database has him listed by a nickname of "Nap Kloza", every single piece of research I have accumulated refers to him as "Jack Kloza" - the name "Nap" never appears in any contemporary newspaper story in my file. Because of this, I refer to him by the name of "Jack".
Jack Kloza was born Jan Klojzy on September 7, 1903 in Siedliska, Poland. Siedliska is located in the south-eastern part of modern day Poland. This region was called Galicia, and had changed hands several times since Poland was divided between Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary at the end of the 18th century. When Jan Klojzy was born in 1903, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Jan was the second child of Wawrzyniec and Franciszka, his sister Marta being born two years earlier. Shortly after his son's birth, Wawrzyniec emigrated to the United States. After landing at Ellis Island, he proceeded west to Milwaukee where there was a large community of Galician Poles. He took odd jobs as a general laborer, and after five years had saved enough to secure passage to America for his wife and two children. Franciszka, Marta, and Jan sailed to America in the spring of 1908 and joined Wawrzyniec in Milwaukee. The family first lived on Dousman Street and then Bolton Street, both in the city's predominantly Polish 13th Ward.
The 13th Ward had a particularly vibrant baseball scene dating back to the turn of the century when the first wave of Polish immigrants arrived. Like immigrants before and after them, Milwaukee's Poles embraced the game of baseball as a way of blending into the fabric that is America. The "Patron Saint" of Polish baseball in Milwaukee was Louis Fons. Born in Milwaukee in 1878, Fons was the son of Polish immigrants and had been a pretty good semi-pro ballplayer before becoming a real estate investor. A pillar of the Polish-American community, in 1909 Fons assumed the reigns of the Kosciuszko Monument Cigars team that played in the City League. Besides being the team's financial backer, Fons played second base and captained the club. After finishing in second place that first year, Fons hung up his spikes and concentrated on making his team a powerhouse. He outfitted the team in uniforms of bright red - Poland's national color - and dubbed the club the Kosciusko Reds. Note the dropping of the "z" from Kosciuszko to "Americanize" the moniker and allowing it to fit better on the new uniforms. Dubbed the "Koskys" in the newspapers, the Kosciusko Reds ruled Milwaukee's semi-pro scene for the next decade.
In this vibrant baseball culture, young Jan Klojzy learned to play ball. Sometime during his teen years, Jan Klojzy became Jack Kloza, and he began making a name for himself on the Milwaukee sandlots as a hard-hitting catcher. Kloza caught for a succession of amateur clubs, first the Gordon's, then moving over to the Straub's, followed by the Jay-Kays and finally St. Casimir's.
By 1924, Kloza's bat was powerful enough that he was invited to join the semi-pro Bonita Kandy Kids. Like many large companies in the decades before World War II, the Bonita Candy Company of Fond du La, Wisconsin fielded a highly competitive baseball team. Besides guaranteeing their ballplayers an easy day job in exchange for playing ball on the weekends, companies like Bonita Candy paid their players an extra salary on a per-game basis. As the Kandy Kids backstop, Jack Kloza earned the princely sum of $5 a game, about what the average factory worker made in an 8 hour day. The following year Kloza was dropped from the Kandy Kids when the league instituted a no-ringers clause.
Fortunately, Kloza's renown in the Wisconsin sandlot scene attracted the interest of George "Stormy" Kromer. "Stormy Kromer" may sound familiar to natives of the upper Midwest as it is the name of a style of hat popular in that region. Although you might not know it by that name, a Stormy Kromer cap looks like a thick wool ball cap with ear flaps. Holden Caulfield wore one throughout the book "A Catcher in the Rye" and bomber crewman wore a leather and fur version during World War II. Available at any outdoor and camping outfitters, you still see hunters and fishermen donning these caps today. In fact, the Stormy Kromer hat was invented by George "Stormy" Kromer. Kromer was a Milwaukee semi-pro baseball player around the turn of the century who became a railroad engineer after his playing days ended. When he lost one too many hats at work to the wind, Kromer had his wife modify one of his old baseball caps with ear flaps, and the "Stormy Kromer" was born. The hat proved so popular that Kromer's wife was swamped with orders, and in 1903 the Kromer Cap Company was founded. Now a wealthy haberdasher, Stormy Kromer returned to his first love, baseball.
In 1925 Kromer bought the Blytheville, Arkansas Tigers of the Class D Tri-State League. Already known for creating a new headgear in his image, Kromer installed himself as the Tigers' general manager and skipper, and set about modifying bush league baseball.
Up until this point, the minor leagues were used as a stepping stone to the major leagues. Even
the most low level minor league team was expected to field a
competitive team, and as such, their rosters were a mixture of veterans sprinkled with a few youngsters trying to make good. If a young player was lucky - and talented enough - he gained experience by watching the older players on his team. Dedicated coaching staffs were still decades in the future and a young player was basically left to sink or swim as he made his way up the ladder of organized ball. Stormy Kromer looked to change that. Once assuming the helm, Kromer invited over 211 aspiring ballplayers to try out for the Tigers. Many of these kids were from Kromer's native Wisconsin, including a sizable contingent from Milwaukee.
Stormy piloted the Tigers to a 31-77 record, and a dismal 35 game losing streak set a new organized baseball record. Stormy maintained all along that he was concentrating more on developing young players than winning a pennant, but that didn't soothe the embarrassed Blytheville rooters. Although today's low-level minor leagues are used entirely to develop young players, back in 1925 this was a new idea. Kromer's revolutionary concept was lost on the Blytheville fans who expected their local nine to at least field a competitive lineup, and the community sued the forward-thinking owner/manager for $2,500 for breach of contract. Needless to say, Kromer was the most unpopular man in the state of Arkansas, but 11 of his kids were indeed sold to higher level minor league teams, including a 21 year-old catcher named Jack Kloza.
Kloza's gaudy .373 average had shone like a diamond amidst the muck of Blytheville's season, and was tops in the Tri-State League. Birmingham of the Southern Association purchased his contract and Kloza was sent to their farm team in Alexandria for 1926. The manager took Kloza out from behind the plate and stationed him at third base. He adjusted well to his new surroundings, and after less than a dozen games was promoted to the Montgomery Lions. Kloza's .379 was second-highest in the Southeastern League (the league leader hit .392 in just 73 at bats as opposed to Kloza's 114). The third baseman did, however, lead the loop with 19 triples and came in second with 29 doubles.
For 1927, Kloza's contract was shifted to the Albany Nuts of the same league. Right from the start Kloza tore apart the league's out-classed pitchers. He hit well over .400 throughout the summer as local sportswriters called him the "Babe Ruth of the Southeast" and scouts frothed at the mouth trying to obtain his services. On July 24th it was reported that the Brooklyn Dodgers had shelled out $65,000 for his contract ($20,000 now, $45,000 later in trade and incentives), a record amount for a Class B player. It was also stated that Connie Mack, in the midst of assembling what will be called the greatest dynasty in Major League history, had bid $25,000 for Kloza, but came up short. Somewhere along the way the Dodgers deal fell through and Kloza remained under contract with Birmingham. In 122 games he was hitting .404 with 28 home runs when the parent club called him up in September. The Barons were locked in a tight pennant race with New Orleans, and it was hoped that the addition of the Southeastern League's "Babe Ruth" would be enough to put them over the top. Kloza got into 19 games and hit a modest .255 with a pair of homers before the Barons finished in second place. All told, Kloza was the Southeastern League's batting champ and runner up in home runs. Though the Brooklyn deal collapsed, the Washington Senators stepped in and purchased the slugging third baseman for spring, 1928 delivery.
In March 1928, Jack Kloza prepared travel to Tampa, Florida for his first big league spring training camp. Then, his mother Franciszka took sick and postponed his departure. Although I haven't found any hard evidence, Franciszka Kloza doesn't show up in any public record after 1927, so it is probable she passed away at this time. Meanwhile, Kloza's impending arrival was much anticipated in the Tampa camp. When he did make his appearance, Jack Kloza did not disappoint. Scribes described him as "a powerfully built chap" with "hands of really enormous proportions". His first at bat produced a drive which one writer delusionally touted as "250 yards". Kloza continued to knock the ball all over the training field, leading the Senators veteran manager Bucky Harris to exclaim to owner Clark Griffith "If you think we have some sluggers on this ball club wait until you have looked at this fellow Kloza".
By the second week of camp the beat writers were reporting that Kloza was a lock to make the club. Management moved the big slugger to the outfield where his sped and cannon arm could do the most damage to opposing teams. On March 23 Harris put Kloza in to replace Sam Rice in the outfield in a game against the Reading of the International League. In his pair of at bats he hit a triple and a home run. A week later, after ten spring training games, Kloza was leading all Washington batters with a .750 average. Granted, this is spring training, but you have to think that at the time the Senators lineup featured Hall of Famers Goose Goslin, Sam Rice, Joe Cronin and George Sisler.
The week of March 28, 1928 would be the high point of Jack Kloza's career.
In the first week of April it began to be reported that Kloza's prodigious strength at the plate began to slip. On the surface it would be easy to speculate that the rookie just cooled off after a fast start, however, the truth was quite different. Kloza had contracted the disease that haunted all ballplayers in the pre-World War II south - malaria. This mosquito-born disease which we now only associate with tropical third-world countries was once common in the southern United States. Not only did malaria hit you when first infected, but the disease could reappear at random points throughout a person's life. The fear of contracting malaria was once so prevalent that many northern-born baseball players refused to be assigned to southern ball clubs, even if it meant giving up a promotion. Although by the late 1920's the chances of contracting the disease was less than it was at the turn of the century, Jack Kloza was one of the unlucky ones who did. His once strong body wracked with fever and vomiting, Kloza lost 40 pounds before he was able to leave the hospital. With his strength sapped, Kloza could not hit nor field like he did in March. The Senators broke camp and headed north to start the 1928 season, leaving Jack Kloza behind.
The Senators optioned Kloza to the Louisville Colonels, but still ravaged by malaria, he couldn't produce. After an 0 for 22 slump and batting just .100, Kloza was released to Chattanooga of the Southern Association where he floundered. Most ball players would have given up at this point, but not Jack Kloza. The Montgomery Lions took a chance and signed their old batting champ for 1929. Kloza managed to assemble a decent season trying to play himself back to health. On September 7 he married his hometown sweetheart, Rose Ronowski, in a ceremony held in Montgomery. Kloza finished off the season by hitting .299 with scouting reports good enough to earn a promotion to the Texas League for 1930.
Playing for the Witchita Falls Spudders, Kloza murdered the ball at a .347 clip. He also finished in the top five in hits, total bases, and home runs. On August 7, the Kloza's welcomed their first child, a daughter they named Rosann. The only downside to his fine season was that his work in the outfield was sub-par, leading the Texas League in errors with 24 misplays. It was a miraculous come-back and one which earned him trip back home - not in defeat, but as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers.
The Brewers were members of the American Association, which back then was one of three minor leagues that were ranked just one level below the Major Leagues. A good season in the American Association could earn Kloza a second chance at the big leagues. Going into August, Kloza was batting .308. On August 14th, the Brewers and Toledo Mud Hens were locked in a 0-0 pitcher's duel when Kloza hits a 7th inning home run to put the Brewers on top. Three days later Jack Kloza was playing right field for the St. Louis Browns in the American League.
The Browns obtained Kloza in exchange for outfielder Tom Jenkins. He made his big league debut in the August 16th double header against Washington. In the first game Kloza went hitless in two at bats with a strike out. In the night cap he went 1 for 3 with a walk and strike out. Four days later Kloza struck out in his only two at bats against the Yankees. Then, before he could get into another game, baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis voided the Kloza-Jenkins trade and returned both players to their original teams. Newspaper reports were kind of vague in regards to Landis' ruling, but it had something to do with Jenkins being out of minor league options which made him ineligiable for a trade with Milwaukee. Whatever the reason, Kloza was back with the Brewers. A few weeks later the Browns tried to do the same maneuver, but again, Landis blocked the trade. The Browns were obviously very keen to get Kloza back in St. Louis because the notoriously cash-poor franchise eventually coughed up cash to buy the outfielder out-right. The deal stipulated that Kloza was to report to the Browns for spring training the following year.
At spring training, Kloza was one of the more highly touted prospects. The Browns were in the midst of a couple decades of baseball ineptitude, and a promising slugger like Jack Kloza stood out. With the dearth of talent available, plus regular right fielder Red Kress holding out for more money, Kloza had a great shot at making the club as a starter. Then, just as it did in 1928, tragedy grabbed hold of Jack Kloza. On March 16, Kloza was batting against Browns ace George Blaeholder in an inter-squad game. Blaeholder was the first major leaguer to throw the slider on a regular basis, and it might have been one of those unfamiliar pitches that slammed into Kloza's wrist that afternoon. The injury was serious enough that he was removed from the game and sent to the hospital. X-rays showed no broken bones, but Kloza remained sidelined for the next few weeks. Even with his mangled hand, the Browns had Kloza penciled in alongside Goose Goslin and Fred Schulte as one of the three starting outfielders for when the season began. Then, just before opening day, Red Kress ended his hold out and signed his contract. Though now relegated to reserve outfielder, Kloza still made the Browns opening day roster.
Right from the start, Jack Kloza failed to meet the expectations placed on him. It's unknown whether his hand was still damaged from the drilling it took in spring training or his inability to hit big league pitching. Whatever the reason, his batting average hovered below .200. With veterans Kress, Goslin and Schulte, Kloza's playing time was reduced to mostly pinch hitting, a specialized skill that even the best players seldom master. Still, every once in a while, Kloza showed a bit of what the Browns expected from him: on May 24 he came off the bench to hit an RBI triple that sparked a 7-run rally to beat Detroit. Kloza got into ten more games, again, mostly as a pinch hitter, before sending him back to the minors in exchange for Art Scharein. Now with the Longview Cannibals, Kloza tried his best to slug his way back to the Browns. On August 13th, Kloza batted in 8 runs with two doubles and a home run against the Tyler Sports. The Browns recalled him in mid-September, but he never made it into a game.
Kloza was back with Milwaukee for 1933, and over the next couple of seasons he became one of the best sluggers in the American Association. Kloza hit a healthy .326 with 26 homers in 1934, sparking rumors of another trip to The Show. But, just as it always seemed to do, bad luck stepped in. A collision with a telephone pole that made up part of the outfield wall in Milwaukee's Borchert Field damaged Kloza's right elbow. The injury robbed Kloza of both his strong throwing arm and the power needed to drive the ball out of the park. He limped through the summer of 1935 with a .305 average paired with a lousy 8 homers before the Brewers shut him down in mid-August. In
a gutsy move for the time period, the team sent their prized player to a
surgeon who removed a growth in hopes it would restore the elbow back to full strength. In spring training the following year, Kloza gamely tried to work his elbow back into shape, but after a few days admitted he couldn't do anything with it. He returned to Milwaukee where doctors were unable to help him. Kloza appeared in 19 games as a pinch hitter and managed just two hits, one of them a homer, before he quit the team. The Brewers kept him on as a scout and he underwent a second surgery in anticipation of another comeback. His signing with Milwaukee for 1937 made headlines in the Midwest, but the old power just wasn't there and Kloza was released just before the season began.
Jack Kloza was 33 years old with a career as a baseball player now behind him. He and Rose now had two more children in addition to Rosann: Jacqueline born in 1931 and Jack Jr. born in 1935. Jack needed to look for a new career. Since he'd had his last gasp of glory playing for Milwaukee, he was still extremely popular in his hometown. Kloza leveraged his celebrity into a succession of jobs teaching baseball to the city's kids. The newly-retired ballplayer teamed up with fellow Milwaukee big leaguer Anthony "Bunny" Brief to create two baseball leagues. Brief, whose given name was the tongue-twisting Anthony Grzeszkowski, had played with the Browns, White Sox and Pirates from 1912 to 1917. He took the league representing the neighborhoods from Milwaukee's Southside and Kloza took the Northsiders. By 1944 the "Stars of Yesteryear" league had 85 teams with 6,500 kids. Many local kids learned the fundamentals of the game from these two former big leaguers, and the city of Milwaukee was able to boast that it had one of the most talented sandlot baseball scenes in the nation. This level of talent was represented in the city being represented by winning teams in most of the national tournaments held throughout the 1940's and 50's.
Besides coaching Milwaukee's kids, in 1944 another opportunity opened up for Jack Kloza. Two full years of war had fully depleted the major and minor leagues. With no end in sight, and an increasingly poor product passed off as big league baseball, the All-American Professional Girls Baseball League was formed in 1943. When the league was expanded from four to six teams the following year, Jack Kloza joined former major leaguers Max Carey, Marty McManus, Bubber Jonnard and Bert Niehoff plus Chicago Blackhawks hockey star Johnny Gottselig as managers. Kloza was assigned to the Rockford Peaches, the team made famous in the movie "A League of Our Own". Despite having the best player the AAGPBL produced, Dottie Kamenshek, at first base, the Peaches found themselves in last place in the mid-July. With his record standing at 24-32, Rockford gave Kloza the boot. Then again, contradictory newspaper articles contend that Rockford's skipper resigned over some kind of disagreement with the league office in Chicago. For his part, Jack Kloza refused to say why he left.
Kloza went back to Milwaukee and poured his energy back into the Stars of Yesteryear League. Through he and Bunny Brief's tireless efforts, the league expanded to include over 10,000 boys. While he must have been proud whenever one of his boy's made good, 1952 must have been extra special. That year, his son, Jack, Jr., was selected as the catcher for the team representing Milwaukee in the annual Hearst Sandlot Classic tournament in New York. Jack Jr. later went on to study at St. Mary’s University and became a high school coach.
The big slugger passed away on June 11, 1962, aged 58. Besides leaving behind his wife Rose and four children, Jack Kloza left a legion of thankful Milwaukee kids who learned to play baseball from the friendly former major leaguer. Although he played just 22 games in the majors, Jack Kloza batted .329 with 129 home runs over 12 minor league seasons. And while he might not have a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame, he did make it to Cooperstown, as part of the exhibit on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
